I haven’t been as active blogging for the last few years as my activities have been undergoing a bit of a shift. I spent a number of years focusing on leadership as a major opportunity for improvement, particularly in technology firms that are transitioning from startup to scaleup.

I’ve had the opportunity of doing research at the University of Toronto with the Impact Centre for the last several years and that research has really widened the scope of the work I’m doing. This research has identified that the three main opportunities for improvement that aspiring technology forms have are:

Improving product/market fit to ensure that there is a big enough potential for growth.

Raising enough capital to support that growth.

Adapting to leadership challenges that result from growth.

While I’ll still be blogging on leadership, I intend to spend more time in the future blogging about marketing and finance as well. In addition I’ve changed the website to reflect the change in focus:

The name has been changed from Material Minds to Scaleup OS to reflect the emphasis on the issues faced by scaling technology businesses.

A whole new section that focuses on research on this and other issues has been added –Scaleup Research

The section on Best Practices has been changed to better align with the issues faced by scaling firms.

I will be bringing more people into the development of the site over time to expand its potential.

Thanks for continuing to receive these random musings and given the change in emphasis I would totally understand your desire to discontinue receiving them. If not, I think you’ll find me blogging more often once again on issues that matter as technology firms transition from startup to scaleup.

I just finished an Impact Brief on Public Sector Venture Capital and there were a number of thoughts I had while preparing it that I didn’t think belonged in a report so I figured I would include them here.

The report looked at the ability of BDC’s venture capital arm and MaRS’ Investment Accelerator fund to pick and nurture world class companies. These are two organizations that have invested in over $1 billion of government money in 500 Canadian tech companies.

As I was doing the research I talked with a number of other VC firms to get their perspectives as well. What I found in these conversations stunned me. It appear that very few VCs are looking back at the history of their investments to discover best practices either at investing or at growing world-class tech companies.

Several major venture capital funders have done absolutely no research on best practices and don’t intend to do so. One VC is planning to do some research. One even told me that he didn’t think it would be worthwhile to do this type of research as his companies were all different.

And then I thought about Google and perhaps the whole ethos of Silicon Valley. Google has initiated numerous projects to determine best practices within Google. An HBR article reports that Google initiated “Project Oxygen, a multiyear research initiative. It has since grown into a comprehensive program that measures key management behaviors and cultivates them through communication and training.” Project Aristotle was another study that looked at team effectiveness.

VCs like Openview regularly do research to help their portfolio companies and they share best practices publicly. CB Insights did research on why companies fail. All sorts of VCs blog regularly about the industries they are investing in and how to get better. Just check out websites for Bessemer or Andreessen Horowitz.

What the US VCs get is that research is essential to improve business practices. They are actively trying to get better.

In Canada there is virtually no practitioner based research on technology company best practices. There is virtually no research on investing practices. Governments across the country are investing over $5 billion annually to improve the performance of the technology sector and the application of technology but there is very little research to determine how we can improve these practices. If we’re spending so much money to get better, wouldn’t it make a little sense to spend some money to figure out how best to do that?

It just hit me this morning why the US seems to dominate the world in the creation of innovative companies and products and I think we’ve gotten it all wrong. The Americans aren’t better than the rest of us at research and development and product creation, they’re just better at us in market development.

If you’ve been following my recent research you’ll have seen that I’m on a path to discover why Canada lags many of its peers at the development of an innovation economy. My thesis is that our problem has been misunderstood for years and the problem is not that Canada fails at research and development, patenting or financing startups. The problem is that we’re no good at market development.

I’ve recently started to look at why the US is so good at launching new products and companies. The general consensus seems to be that the US and in particular Silicon Valley is more innovative than the rest of us. But wait a second, this is the country that hasn’t adopted the metric system or replaced low denomination paper currency with coins. This is the country without universal medical care, that still executes citizens, even minors. It is a country with a completely dysfunctional political system and one that is still embroiled in debates over abortion and gay marriage while the rest of the world has moved on. Is this evidence that they lead the world at innovation?

Despite what they claim about innovation and what we think, I think they’re wrong. There is no evidence that the US is better than the rest of us at research and product development. But if they seem to be so good at creating products and companies, what are they better at? I think they’re better at market development.

Over the years across the US, entrepreneurs and companies have perfected the art of market research and in particular design thinking. They have perfected product marketing, developing alliances through business development. They have perfected marketing communications and even more so, sales. They have perfected the art of incubation through such entities as Y Combinator. They have perfected the use of private venture capital and how to best assist the companies reach markets through the assistance these VC firms provide. They have created a machine that can turn average research into world-leading products and companies.

If we want to improve our ability to help innovative new products reach markets we have to stop focusing on the research and development side and focus, as the US has on market development.

Scientists from the internationally respected magazine Nurture vs Nature have disclosed that researchers in Silicon Valley have identified the mutant gene that causes entrepreneurship. This disease involves a recessive mutation and leads to extensive market disruption.

Having discovered the genetic cause of entrepreneurship will help its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-6). Entrepreneurship was not included in DSM-5 as it was felt that it was already covered by the recent inclusion of Internet Addiction, particularly when paired with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The scientists who discovered this genetic variant focused on a region of chromosome 47 that contains several genes involved in the movement of a brain chemical called LEANSU between neurons. One version of the gene, FOUNDR, was found statistically linked (associated) with entrepreneurial success.

Apparently, researchers Hewlett and Packard identified a genetic pattern in their laboratory at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto in the late 1930s. This early genetic discovery was suppressed and not published or patented so that the discoverers and close associates could profit from it. Recent historical research has discovered their original research notes and published these for the benefit of humanity.

The discoverers profited from the research by developing a genetic test that could be used to identify individuals carrying this recessive gene. Having identified carriers, the discoverers would follow up by investing in their technology start-ups. Recipients of investments made resulting from this technology include Gordon Moore, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Page.

Eugene Kleiner and Tom Perkins were early licensees of this technology, which they sub-licensed on a selective basis to co-investors on Sand Hill Road. For many years, the licensees invested in business ideas that had been sketched out at lunch on napkins. According to Vinod Khosla, a recent licensee, the napkins were taken back to secret labs where they could test the saliva deposited on the napkins at lunch, for this mutant gene. Founders with the mutant gene were then cleared for investment by leading Silicon Valley firms.

According to insiders, a recent licensee is Paul Graham. He extended research into the gene using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and has been able to edit the genetic makeup of Y Combinator start-up founders to make them more entrepreneurial, thus improving the success of his investees.

Research is continuing in order to identify a more rare expression of the gene that causes unicorns. Protests are arriving from around the world for full disclosure of this discovery so that other regions can begin to replicate the success that Silicon Valley has had due to the the use of this disruptive technology.

But even that isn’t a good metric, as existing homebuyers who have built up great equity really aren’t hurt much by the run-up in prices.

So in this price escalation, the one thing that really matters is the effect on new homebuyers. And to look at that I’m introducing my third and final metric.

The banks will lend let’s say up to a level where a person’s housing debt service ratio is 30% of income. (The actual number may be higher but given potential credit card debt, I’m using this number as the limit for the sake of analysis – it’s called “Fun With Assumptions.”)

What matters given this limit is how long it takes to save a down payment (or borrow it from relatives.) The only way we can look at this effect is to look at the number of months it takes a new buyer to save enough money so that debt service payments are 30% of income.

You can berate my assumptions in comments but I’m assuming for the sake of analysis that the average buyer can save 10% of their pretax income for a down payment. So the question becomes then how long does it take to save for a house?

And this is where we have a problem and our mini-bubble is in crisis mode. The graph above shows house prices in blue and the red line represents the number of months savings required. This number is well above historical norms and is exceeded in level, only by the years 1988 – 1990. If you remember that time we had a huge correction in house prices

But here’s the problem. As we saw yesterday, the run-up in progress isn’t a problem for people who already own houses. It may not be a problem for foreign buyers, many of who will see Toronto as a reasonably priced market. But it will be a major problem for first time buyers. And this is really the only metric that matters now.

Is this going to be enough to bring the market to its knees? Who knows? The last time we had a big crash, prices were bad for everyone. Now they’re only bad for a few. And that’s the problem with this bubble. Since it isn’t caused by rates and is caused by price run-up it is a different type of bubble.

Only when you use the right metrics can you see what the bubble really means.